Unconventional Soulmates
by Anrheithwyr
Summary: When the twins are born, Luna is almost relieved they are not completely identical. She does not see two mirror-images blinking at each other, but rather two separate boys with their own personalities; her boys, and she loves them both. They are soul mates, two parts of the same person. Strange, both, in their own ways, but soul mates nonetheless, two connected halves of the same


_**Written for the 'Quidditch League Fanfiction Competition' using Free Round. Written for Chaser 3, Puddlemere United (by Chaser 2). Using prompts: nightmare, patient, middle of the road.**_

_**Written for the 'If You Dare Challenge' by Slytherin Cat, using prompt # 179, white. **_

_**Written for the 'Duct Tape Competition' by Lezonne, using **_Green: The color of life, so write about a new life or changes in someone's life

_**Written for the 'Ten times Ten Challenge' by she who is made of stars, using Creature: Acromantula. **_

….

When the twins are born, Luna is almost relieved they are not completely identical. She does not see two mirror-images blinking at each other, but rather two separate boys with their own personalities; her boys, and she loves them both.

They are soul mates, two parts of the same person. Strange, both, in their own ways, but soul mates nonetheless, two connected halves of the same whole.

The older boy-the one she names Lorcan because he gives out such a loud, fierce squall in his first moments-is nearly olive in tone, like his father, with a tuft of dark hair like Rolf, though he has Luna's clear blue eyes that seem to see farther into a person than normal.

The younger of the two-Lysander, she names him, the liberator, the one who will do great things, she is promised-he has her fair complexion and her light blonde hair, but the eyes are of his father's a harsher combination of brown verging on blue. He looks up at her with questions that are waiting to be asked, though Luna does not think she is ready to answer them just yet.

(Over time, of course, Lysander's hair will darken and Lorcan's will lighten, and they'll both tan from summers spent mostly outdoors-they will look a little more identical, and sometimes, they will confuse people, but it is the eyes that make it so easy to tell the difference.)

When the Healer's assistant lays them down in separate cots, Lysander sleeps with relative ease, but Lorcan squabbles for his brother, reaching with impossibly tiny hands for a twin that he cannot see, separated by mere inches of plastic.

They are not perfectly identical, but these two brothers are connected in some way; they need each other as a twin always does, and they will most likely always need each other.

Lysander reaches for his brother in sleep, and when Lorcan finally slumbers, it is with tiny fists still groping for the flesh of his twin that he can almost feel, but not quite.

Lorcan is noisy during those first nights of his life, waking at odd hours just as his parents feel safe enough to settle in for a full night's sleep.

He shrieks, demanding milk, a new diaper, a hug, his favourite toy-he is always sticking his little fingers through the slots of his cot, begging to be touched, to be comforted in some way. Lorcan was not made to be alone-he doesn't work that way, and his parents quickly figure this out.

Lysander, in contrast, as though teasing his sleepless parents, is very fussy in the sunny hours of the day, sometimes cooing sweetly, but more often than not, he is screaming and flailing, not quieting down even when Daddy picks him up and rocks him for hours as they take a tour of Lysander and Lorcan's tiny, ever changing bedroom.

(They don't ever stay in one place very often, the Scamanders, always moving, exploring. The boys spend their first birthday in backpacks attached to their parents as they wander through rich greenery in the middle of the Amazon on the backs of giant spiders called Acromantula.)

He does not stop, does not know _how _to stop, and he just screams until he no longer has a voice, and Lysander is left with nothing but those difficult fists of his that can almost control (_but not quite_) that fly everywhere as he tries to get his parent's attention. Lysander begs for attention, and he is always very quick to get it.

Though Luna and Rolf decide to stick around for the first three months of their sons' lives, in Devon, they quickly break down and realise staying in one place in not for them, and it never will be.

By the time the twins are six years old, they have lived in Colombia, Australia, Belgium, Uganda, India, Japan, Vietnam, and Canada.

It is Rolf who finally decides that maybe England _is _the best place for his young boys, who can speak multiple languages, but do not even know what London is. It is June, and they should be in school, but instead, the boys are on the backs of unicorns as big as houses.

It is also Rolf who brings them to their grandfather's house because Luna has caught wind of a strange type of purple sheep up near Kiev, and she wants to check it out. So, it is up to Rolf to drop the boys off with all their worldly possessions squashed into two little rucksack bags; he hugs them, smiles, and says "See you soon."

They don't see either of their parents for another eighteen months.

Life with Papa in Devon is dreary and rainy, their only other playmates were the occasional visits to the brood of Weasley grandchildren, who are all older and bigger than the twins. Other than that, they have each other and their imagination, but not much else.

Papa does not buy them toys, not even when their birthday comes around a few weeks after Daddy drops them off, but they don't say anything in complaint.

Papa is not much weird than what they are used to with Mum and Dad, but he mostly just fiddles around with things and talks to himself, leaving his young grandsons to their own devices, occasionally forgetting to go out to get milk.

Lorcan learns to read first, in the lap of a patient Molly Weasley, who is plump and friendly, just how Lorcan thinks a grandmother ought to be, though he has never met either of his, and has no idea what being a grandmother truly even means.

She reads to him constantly, spelling out words he did not recognise, letting him sound the words out over and over, and scribbling newly learned letters on every scrap of paper he can find.

When he goes back home to Papa and Lysander, who has been sick in bed, he shows his little brother these new letters of his, teaching him to read as he has been taught; Lorcan is not as patient as the woman he is beginning to refer to as Grandma Molly, rushing his brother through the alphabet, insisting he learn quickly, because Lorcan wants someone to share this strange language with.

Lysander begins to have nightmares, crying out from his bed, seeing monsters that seemed to exist outside of his mind, though they were invisible to everyone but him. He cannot control himself, and the twins quickly get used to waking to soiled sheets that they wash themselves, because Papa is nearing eighty years old, and is too scrambled to do anything to help them.

The twins turn seven before Mum and Daddy get back, too old to be soiling the sheets, yet Lysander still wets his sheets in terror every night. He begs for his parents to come back to get them in his scribbled letters that the twins send out each week with an owl, though they don't even know where to send the bird, because Daddy never told them where he and Mum were going.

Lorcan grows impatient with his younger twin, wishing to slap him-threatening to do so several times, though he never can quite bring himself to do so. It has been five months since their parents left, and they hear nothing, not a single word, from their parents. Lorcan becomes angrier each day while Lysander continues to have terrible nightmares.

The year ends and starts over without a remark from any of them, though one of their many new 'cousins', Albus, brings over a few fireworks and shows them how to set the sparks off so that the fireworks dance and squeal in the air. Albus is eleven and goes to Hogwarts, and the twins follow him around with questions.

They play outside in the snow, wearing tattered, too-small jackets, screaming when Papa comes out and tosses snowballs at their head. He hardly ever leaves his room anymore other than to pick up the milk that he now has delivered to the Rook.

Pretty soon, it is too warm for snow, but they keep their winter clothes on anyway, because Lysander came to Papa's weighing twenty-three kilograms, but now he's only eighteen, and Lorcan insists Lysander wear both their coats. Lysander shivers, and Lorcan heads to the Weasleys for food.

Grandma Molly only looks at Lysander for a second before insisting that they start coming over for dinner as often as they can. She complains that her own children don't visit her enough, that all but three of her grandchildren are away at school-she doesn't want an empty house, she tells them.

Lorcan has never had better cooking, as far as he can remember-in his short life, he cannot remember the exotic meals he once ate with his parents. All that matters is the delicious, warm soup that Grandma Molly makes for them, because it is becoming hard to chew and tear at food with their teeth.

After a while, Lysander starts to gain his weight back, and they don't look so sallow-skinned anymore. Grandma Molly, as they both now have taken to calling her, brings them food and presents, taking out time in her not so busy day to visit them, making sure they're still learning.

Pretty soon, she is encouraging Papa to let the boys stay at her house semi-permanently, because she is younger and still has her wits about her, and she is still rationally thinking compared to Papa- Grandma Molly is only sixty-eight to his eighty-two.

They take refuge in one of the many empty rooms upstairs, still young enough to feel the urge to jump and down on their single bed. Grandma Molly offers to drag up another, separate bed, but they have never slept apart before, and they don't intend to start now.

She feeds the twins with a happy smile, glad to watch these two little boys gobble up her food, and it is not just soup that she makes anymore-there are ham, turkey, peanut butter sandwiches, chocolate and sugar biscuits, and several types of juice.

They eat eggs and bacon for dinner and once, they have tiny steaks for breakfast. Lysander's eyes light up when he takes his first ever bite of macaroni and cheese.

They are in some kind of strange heaven, the twins think to themselves, and they learn to love every minute spent in Molly Weasley's kitchen.

Very soon after they move into the Burrow-sooner than they thought possible-the air warms up around them and trees brighten as flowers bloom; Grandma Molly, too, moves much more frantically than they could even imagine she was able to.

Grandpa Arthur explains that this is because the others, the grandchildren, are coming back, and the twins begin to worry that they will be sent away, back to Papa. Grandpa Arthur assures them that they don't have to leave if they don't want to, and the twins begin to brighten like the trees outside, looking forward to seeing their new cousins once again.

They can hardly wait, anxious and impatient, so eager to rush towards that scarlet train that will bring back Louis and Fred and Albus and Rose and all the others.

The cousins come back in late June, noisy and boisterous, with many stories to tell them; the cousins seem only a little surprised to see Lysander and Lorcan at the train station along with Grandma Molly and Grandpa Arthur, as though they are used to their grandparents picking them up with two unrelated children in tow.

They smile and pat the twins on their heads warmly-Albus even grins at them, offering more firecrackers to them, and it really begins to dawn on them then that what they have now is a true, stable family all to themselves.

There is no more constant moving around, learning a new language, or meeting new people all the time. They have stayed here for nearly a year-the longest they have ever remained stationary-and the twins begin to realise they don't ever want to leave this place, or these people, ever again.

It is not long after this that they simply stop writing to Mum and Daddy altogether, beginning to forget those once familiar faces that they have not seen in so long.

Is it truly possible that they ever belonged to those people that they can hardly remember, or had their parents always been this older, ginger couple who hugged them and loved them?

They turn another year older, taller and smarter than when they had turned seven last year. The twins are no longer pale and shy from months spent creeping around their Papa-they are the bright children they had been back in the fields of Africa, always ready and willing to play.

Lorcan and Lysander are eight now, with hair that is somewhere between brown and not quite blond, with skin that is tanned from days spent climbing trees and skipping through the marsh. Lysander's eyes are still dark and brooding, and Lorcan's eyes are still bright and friendly, but it is obvious to everyone that these are brothers.

Lysander is the taller of the two, but Lorcan is stronger and fiercer and they wrestle at night or during the bright day-whenever they can, really-sometimes with each other and sometimes with their cousins, wrestling and poking and prodding each other.

Bedtime still comes with a story, but it is now sometimes Victoire or Rose or Louis who reads to them, big long books that take days to finish.

They don't miss their parents anymore; they barely even remember them, and if it weren't for weekly trips back to the Rook, they would probably forget entirely about Papa, who does not leave his bed anymore.

Grandma Molly fusses over him, but he is unable and unwilling to see a Healer about his fading eyes or his creaking bones that ache and stiffen when he tries to move.

Summer is fleeting, the twins discover, as August quickly fades into September faster than they thought possible. It is just Lorcan and Lysander, and sometimes Roxanne, who will occasionally sing to them or be willing to pretend to be their princess in need of rescuing.

The other cousins go back to school, promising to write, though the twins are originally suspicious, recalling that first year without a word from their parents.

But the cousins _do _write home, and Grandpa Arthur reads the letters over breakfast, chuckling at his grandchildren's antics, or frowning at their ashamedly admitted mistakes.

Lysander no longer wets the bed, he proudly announces one day, and the nightmares have nearly faded entirely; he is happier now, as is Lorcan, spending their days with Grandma Molly and Grandpa Arthur in a happy home with warm beds and god food.

September seems to stretch forever, and in that time, they celebrate both Aunt Hermione's and Roxanne's birthday, as well as visiting Papa every few days.

He is getting sicker every time they see him, until one day, Grandpa Arthur says maybe oughtn't to bother him anymore. The twins don't quite understand why, but they don't say a word when Grandma Molly tells them to go play upstairs while Uncle Harry and Uncle Ron bring Papa back to the Burrow.

It is weird, the fragile adult downstairs who needs taking care of like a baby. Some nights, they creep down the stairs to peek at Papa, who reminds them of a skeleton, his barely there tuft of blond hair that is thinning and falling out around him on the couch.

Papa is sick, Grandpa Arthur tells them sadly-very sick, and there is not much they can do to help him, except to be quiet. The twins play outside as much as they can, even though it is getting colder every day. They don't much like being cooped up in silence all the time.

And then, Papa is dead-dead, not breathing, though they rub their hands over his now bald and shiny head, begging him to come back, because if he doesn't come back, Mum and Daddy will never find them ever again, and they'll be apart forever. It is November, cold and snowy, and Papa is dead.

Grandma Molly lets them come to the funeral only because it is their grandfather, and because they ask to, claiming they will be very well behaved and they won't make any noise, _honest Grandma Molly, honest. _

Lysander begins to have nightmares again, nightmares in which Papa creeps up the stairs to look at him while he sleeps. He shrieks in his sleep and Grandma Molly comes in every night to calm him down, but there is no calming Lysander when he is afraid. There is no consoling him when he is terrified.

As November slides into December and they prepare for Christmas again, it is with a more somber attitude. Death is real, permanent, and the twins understand that now, every time they look at the Rook where Papa is buried. The snow grows higher and Lysander cries while Lorcan starts writing letters to Mum and Daddy again.

The boys go outside a few days before Christmas to build snowmen, but Lorcan quickly becomes distracts by something he sees coming up from the village, what looks like two people trudging their way up the road. He silently walks out to see who it is coming towards the Burrow.

Lorcan is standing in the middle of the road, pointing at something coming at them from a distance. Lysander looks up from his snowman, squinting, and then he is screaming and running because it is _Mum _and it is _Daddy-look, Lorcan, look, it's them! _

They're coming up the road and the boys yell with joy, running to meet their parents who they haven't seen for eighteen months; it is as if their parents have never left, as though they just went down the store for milk.

There are no excuses made, no apologies, just questions and kisses and hugs. Grandma Molly seems suspicious and angry, but the twins cling to their father, and they are too busy being with their parents to bother with questions.

They are too happy to forget eighteen months of pain.


End file.
